Recent content by gyoder

So here's the skinny... I brewed a dry stout and planned on using the yeast cake to ferment my gigantic imperial. Unfortunately, I was unable to find time to brew the imperial stout until about 5.5 weeks after the dry stout finished. When I brewed the imperialt I racked right onto the...

Hope all of you in the Northeast are enjoying a snow day. I have a few questions regarding homebrew competitions. My latest IPA turned out to be the best beer I have ever brewed. I even had remembered to fill 3, 12oz. bottles in order to enter them in a competition. After looking at...

I'll be brewing a dry stout on Sunday during the Super Bowl and have been doing a lot of reading about mineral additions since my brewing water is about as close to distilled as you can get with a pH of 6.1. Brewing an IPA I would normally adjust all of my brewing water with gypsum to get the...

Thanks guys. Cracking a homebrew post-haste. Trying not to laugh at BeerPressure's reponse...

Hello all. I cultured some Bell's yeast from a bottle of two-hearted and have built it up to about 1500mLs using a stir plate and pressure canned starter wort in the last week. I let the yeast drop out of suspension and decanted some of the wort because I was planning on getting another...

Totally fine.

As far as if the beer's done, if your hydrometer reading hasn't changed over the course of 2 or 3 days it most certainly is. Judging just by your OG and FG however the beer is probably done. Your brew is at about 75% attenuation which is appropriate for California ale yeast. Any additional...

I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction. Every all-grain brew I've done I can't seem to get my finishing gravity past 1.018. It doesn't matter what the starting gravity is. I keep my mash temps low, around 149 or 150, I pitch more than enough yeast and I add yeast nutrient...

This is all valuable info. Thanks to all who responded and helped me with my questions. I'll post tomorrow and let you all know how it went. I'm planning on brewing a Bell's Two-Hearted clone. With regards to the different flavor characteristics provided by the different mash temps I may...

Thanks so much for your help, guys! I'm definitely going to up my qts per lb ratio. I picked up a graduated gallon pitcher recently so checking exactly how much I get and sparging until I reach my target volume for the boil seems to be an excellent idea. Can't wait to give this a go...

Finally making the jump into AG after reading a lot and slowly acquiring the equipment. I'll be mashing in a SS 40qt brewpot with a SS false bottom. I'll be using an outdoor burner and insulating the mash tun to hold at temperature. I'm planning on batch sparging. I think I've got a pretty...

As long as the ambient temperature in whatever room your keeping it in is in the yeasts preferred temp range and doesn't fluctuate wildly I wouldn't worry about it. Although, it is interesting to see how much fermentation can increase the temperature of your wort from the time you pitch until...

Thanks for your input silkky. I think I am going to go with the half gallon addition, hopped with chinook (the only hop I used in the wort). Would it be best to re-rack to another carboy with the cooled tea now and let it sit another week or two, or should I wait until bottling time and add...

Thanks for all of the info guys. The SG was 1.086 and the FG is about 1.016 so I think I might make an attempt to try the tea, diluting this bad boy probably won't be that big a deal with that high of a SG. Perhaps, as far as acidity is concerned, I can add some gypsum to the water to...

I made an arrogant bastard clone about 2 weeks ago. I racked it to the secondary today and because I was only able to do a partial boil, it lacks the hop character I was hoping for. Would it be possible to boil an additional amount of hops in just water and add it to the bottling bucket in a...